"The durability of the spiritual shield is rebounding. Bai Ze has indeed resolved the faults!" mumbled Bai Kaixin in disbelief.

"Just as I expected. Bai Ze is the best refiner in our society except Uncle Xiong. Of course, he is going to fix everything!" Lei Dalu laughed happily.

"This is good. Enhanced by the space swirl, our velocity is higher and higher and is about to surpass the speed limit of Gold Horn!"

Bai Kaixin regained his professionalism instantly. He quickly operated the circular light beam as he said, "But we are going deeper and deeper into the swirl, too. The attraction force is getting stronger. We have to seize the crucial moment to switch our direction!"

Gold Horn rushed at the center of the space swirl at a higher and higher speed in a graceful arc like an arrow released from a bow, until it turned into a streak of gold brightness!

Tremendous space garbage and meteoroids were striking the spiritual shield of Gold Horn. Terrible ripples were spreading out, as if countless giant hands were trying to tear it open.

The figure representing the hardness of the spiritual shield was unsteady. Now, it was soaring; now, it was plunging. It struggled to stay around 50%.

"Prepare to alter our route. The spiritual shield is not going to stand for long," suggested Bai Kaixin, who swallowed anxiously.

He was still wearing a crazy smile, yet his eyes were bloodshot as they were gazing at the ever-changing data on the light beam without even blinking. He gnashed his teeth. "Our remaining spiritual energy and the frailty of the starship mean that we can only try once. If we cannot escape once, we will never escape!

"Our speed right now is insufficient. We need to be fast, still faster!"

Bai Kaixin said hurriedly, "The faster we are, the higher pressure the spiritual shield will suffer. If it explodes at some point, we will be screwed!"

While they were talking, the hardness of the spiritual shield was improved by 2% and stopped at 53% tediously.

Lei Dalu grinned, his white teeth glimmering. He stopped talking and sat on the captain seat cross-legged, while he fixed his eyes on the light beam without moving as if he were a burning statue.

...

Inside the cabin of spiritual shield generator, Li Yao spat a mouthful of black blood and dived into the cooling pool with abundant components for the ninth time.

His telepathic thoughts spread out like ripples into every rune array and every component. They even flowed to the outside of the starship along the generator, making Li Yao feel that he was the spiritual shield of Gold Horn itself resisting the meteoroid showers and the space garbage.

Every time the spiritual shield took a blow, all the defense rune arrays on the generator would shine abruptly, and Li Yao would feel like somebody had smashed his head with a burning hammer. He was grimacing in the excruciating pain every time.

Zigzagged streams of blood were flowing out his eyes, ears, and nose. Some of them dried, only to be replaced by new ones a moment later. In the end, his face seemed to be covered in an eccentric tattoo.

His skin was breaking and healing time and time again. His muscles had all withered. He was merely struggling with the stimulation from the overdose of strengthening drugs and the Heart Locking Flowers.

Quenching thirst with poison. What Li Yao was doing was truly quenching thirst with poison!

Had his body and soul not been far sturdier than those of the common Cultivators, he would've exploded into nothingness a long time ago!

Under the continuous scourge of the space swirl, Li Yao found it hard to hold on.

His limbs were burning at first, then numb, and beyond any perception eventually. If he couldn't see his limbs with his own eyes, he would start doubting whether or not his soul had been pulled away from his body and captured by the space swirl, which had then stretched it into a spiral, hundreds of thousands of meters long. He kept falling, falling, and falling toward the nucleus of the True Fusion...

It was not pain that he felt. The insufferable ache was replaced by cozy warmth at some point; he didn't know when. A thought was jumping inside his brain like an alluring spark, tempting him to let go of everything and be embraced by the True Fusion.

In a trance, Li Yao saw a vigorous face in front of him.

Ding Lingdang was smiling at him, with obvious contempt on her face, as if she were saying, "You can't get yourself up from such a minor setback? What a loser!"

But her scarlet eyes were emitting brightness that was more glamorous than stars, which seemed to be saying, "Stand up now! I don't believe that you can be put down so easily. Let's fight one more time!"

They were expressions that he had always seen during his competitions with Ding Lingdang.

And every time, however painful and exhausted, he had gritted his teeth and stood up again, turning Ding Lingdang's pretended disdain into genuine disbelief!

It was the moment that he felt most content.

"One second, one more second! Everything might change in the next second!

"I will definitely return to the Heaven's Origin Sector and to Ding Lingdang's side. Some small space swirl is not going to stop me!"

...

In the north of the Grand Desolate Plateau of the Heaven's Origin Sector, at a starless night, after a fierce battle.

There was nothing but dead bodies on the ground. Blood was flowing like rivers. The once overwhelming beast tides had all turned into broken limbs which had been piled up in horrifying piles.

"She-she is not dead yet!"

"The Inferno Witch is still alive!"

"How could it be! An entire night, and three beast tides, including seven high-level demon generals!"

"She, she-"

A team of soldiers approached the highest hill which was made up by the corpses of several biochemical beasts that were almost twenty meters tall. On the skull of the biochemical beast at the top of the hill was a shattered yet nonetheless intimidating crystal suit, which was enveloped by seven serpents that were as red as blood and as furious as fire!

The arms of this particular crystal suit, after being strengthened on purpose, were even thicker than the waists of commonly-seen crystal suits. Countless stripes of flames were carved on the arms and interweaved into two blossoming red lotuses on the fists.

The soldiers all held their breath and reverently watched the master of the crystal suit, the Inferno Witch, who had risen up to fame miraculously like a volcano eruption and was respected as the craziest Building Foundation Stage Cultivator of the Heaven's Origin Sector!

Huala!

Seeing that reinforcements had arrived, the crimson crystal suit trembled and crumpled.

"Are you alright?"

The soldiers were quite shocked. Two medics hurried to step forward and dismantle the facial cover of the crystal suit while preparing the medication drugs.

Behind the facial cover, Ding Lingdang was pale, her breath feeble. But she was staring at the deep night sky, and, as if noticing a glimmer in the infinite darkness, beamed with a vague smile.

"I'm fine."

Ding Lingdang shut his eyes and grinned. "I am waiting for a certain someone to return from the sea of stars. Until then, I'm always fine!"

...

Inside the cooling pool, Li Yao failed to count how many 'one second's he had persisted through. His crystal suit had been battered a long time ago, yet its scraps were attached to his body by the attraction of his spiritual energy. Some of them were even embedded in his flesh because of the high temperature.

Enough strengthening drugs for a common Cultivator to use for an entire year had been guzzled by him.

The Heart Locking Flowers to stabilize the soul had been eaten up, too.

The muscles all over his body had withered. Thick veins and nerves bulged out of his skin, shrinking and expanding hideously.

At this moment, a stream of flames almost ten thousand kilometers long together with billions of meteoroids extended from the deepest part of the True Fusion and burst out the energy that resembled a solar flare.

Although the stream was thousands of kilometers away from Gold Horn, the flames at the front had already slapped at Gold Horn like an unstoppable giant hand!

BOOM!

For a moment, Gold Horn's spiritual shield was tremoring like soap bubbles under the sunlight and was about to crumble.

Li Yao felt that he had been hit by lightning. His crystal suit exploded abruptly into thousands of glittering pieces, revealing a dry, thin body.

However, deep down the blue and purple veins, streaks of gold brightness were flowing vaguely at a higher and higher speed.

During the battle against Skeleton Dragon, Li Yao had absorbed a huge amount of Flowing Brightness Crystals without caring about the consequences.

Only a small proportion of them were really digested by him on the spot. The majority of the residues had sunk inside his internal organs.

Flowing Brightness Crystals were the marrow crystals of marrows crystals and contained enormous spiritual energy. Through the normal methods of training, he might not be able to completely digest the residues in ten or even twenty years.

Bur right now, under the tremendous pressure of the True Fusion, at the critical moment, Li Yao's every cell was driven by their survival instincts and started biting and chewing the residues of the Flowing Brightness Crystals!

Li Yao seemed to be in the middle of two top experts' attacks, with the furious space swirl in the outside and the continuous exploding Flowing Brightness Crystals inside his body. The two torrents of energy intertwined and savaged his internal organs, stretching, enlarging, and strengthening his veins and nerves. Eventually, they congregated into oceans of spiritual energy in liquid form, flooding upward to his brain.

For a moment, Li Yao's brain seemed to be soaked in a hot spring with abundant spiritual energy. The endless suffering was all gone. His every brain cell was reborn and rejoiced.

Advancement!

I have advanced into the high level of the Building Foundation Stage at such a moment!

Li Yao was overjoyed.

The biggest difference between Building Foundation Stage Cultivators and Refinement Stage Cultivators was that Building Foundation Stage Cultivators could compress their spiritual energy into the liquid form to nourish their own bodies.

In the beginning level of the Building Foundation Stage, the spiritual energy could only be used to nourish the muscles and bones.

In the middle level, the spiritual energy could nourish the veins and nerves, which was also one of the reasons Li Yao was not scared of internal bleeding in his brain.

As for the high level of the Building Foundation Stage, the spiritual energy could be transmitted into the brain and nourish the brain cells directly, making the Cultivator's mind clearer, their senses sharper, and their computational ability stronger, thus laying a solid foundation for their future Cultivation. It was also the true meaning of 'Building Foundation Stage'.

No. No. Not the high level of the Building Foundation Stage, but-

Li Yao felt that the spiritual energy from his body had amazing interactions with his brain cells after it surged into his brain. His every brain cell was revolving slowly like a minor universe. The spiritual energy span around his brain cells, surged out again, and slid downwards along his spine. His coccyx felt itching and lumpy.

It was a sign that he had reached the peak of the Building Foundation Stage!

Under the high pressure of the space swirl and the Flowing Brightness Crystals, not only did Li Yao made an advancement to the high level of the Building Foundation Stage, he had also touched the threshold of the peak of the Building Foundation Stage.

The itching coccyx indicated that a new organ was maturing at the end of his spine. It was the second brain of a human!

Once the second brain started growing, it would mean the legendary Core Formation Stage. The so-called 'Core' was actually the second brain!

After the second brain fully took shape, the primeval force hidden inside the cells of human beings for billions of years would be awakened. It would be the ultimate harbinger of the Nascent Soul Stage!

'Nascent' had two meanings. On one hand, it represented the earliest ancestral force; on the other hand, it meant that, since the second brain had just awakened, the second brain was still not very keen, like that of a new-born baby!